


This Is How the Future's Made

by golden_d



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-25
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_d/pseuds/golden_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not a perfect world, but anything could be possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is How the Future's Made

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [We Could Be Anything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/100656) by [golden_d](https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_d/pseuds/golden_d). 



Ianto Jones is seventeen and way too old for this. He can only imagine how Rhi feels; she’s two years older. But Dad wanted a bloody huge country picnic for his fiftieth birthday, and he’s got the closest thing to it--maybe with rotting picnic tables and a rusty playground instead of some picturesque hillside, but the “bloody huge” is there. There’s a shitload of cousins that only come around for weddings and funerals (he doesn’t know which they’re expecting this time), and some of Dad’s best mates. 

About the time Dad starts on his fifth beer, Rhi grabs Ianto’s arm. “Let’s go for a walk, yeah?” she says. “Away from this crowd.”

“Aunt Gladys nagging you about being an old maid again?”

“She never  _stops_ ,” Rhi says, glancing furtively over her shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Behind the playground is the paltriest copse of trees Ianto’s ever seen. You can see straight through to the other side, but the other side never seems to arrive. “Rhi,” he begins, at the same time as she says, “Hey, Ianto...”

“Lot more trees than there should be.”

“Yeah,” she says, and turns around, and yells. Ianto looks; the trees have closed over where the playground should be. Rhi grabs his arm. “Ianto, what the hell is going on?”

Not that he knows any more than she does, and he shakes her off and digs in his pockets. “Fag?” he asks, offering the pack and a lighter.

She wrinkles her nose--she smokes some girly mentholated brand--but nods anyway. “Yeah, fine.” 

They smoke as they walk. Rhi checks her mobile, but there’s no signal. It feels like Narnia or something, except there’s no Jesus lion around to give advice or piggy-back-rides. “Think they can see the trees from the picnic?”

“Maybe,” Rhi says. “Maybe not, or they would’ve come exploring for a place to piss.” She sighs and takes a seat against a tree, stubbing out her fag on a rock. “Come on, you. Sit down.” He stays standing, grinning when she scowls at him. “Be that way.” She tilts her head back, looking up at the canopy. “Not that I want to stay here, but--it’s sort of perfect, you know? A perfect woods. Like a fairytale, only without witches and evil stepmothers.”

It’s close enough to what Ianto was thinking that he has to laugh. “Like when we were kids, yeah? And Dad is a master tailor.” It’s a game they used to play. In a perfect world, Dad would have his shit together, would have a life that hadn’t fallen apart; Mum would be alive; Rhi would be a best-selling writer; and he would be a world-famous striker (unless he was a world-famous rugby centre instead). 

Rhii smacks his leg. “Oi, you! Anything could be possible.” 

“Like you getting up off your arse so we can explore?”

She shrieks and tackles him, toppling them both over. As Ianto falls, something catches his eye, and he scrambles to his feet, crushing his fag under one shoe. “What’s that?”

Neither of them can tell what it is from where they are, but it’s something stone and grey and hopefully-not-gingerbread, and together they yell “RACE!” and start sprinting.

Turns out, it’s a wishing well. Ianto kicks it, just to make sure it’s real. “Got any money?” Rhi asks.

They dig through their pockets and come up with a pack of gum and three pence. Ianto hands Rhi a penny and keeps two for himself. She chomps on a stick of gum and cracks a bubble, offering him a stick grudgingly, but he shakes his head no. “Count of three?” he asks, and they throw the coins into the well. The coins make a satisfying splash, and they stare down after them. They can’t see the bottom, and the setting sun casts a golden sheen that makes it hard even to see the water.

“So,” Ianto says. “What’d you wish for?”

“To go home, silly,” she laughs. “You?”

“Adventure.”

They slide down to sit together on the grass, watching the sun set and sink, and Rhi nods off against his shoulder. Ianto fights it, but soon enough he sleeps, too.

When they wake up, they’re propped up against a portable toilet, and Ianto shouts and flails away, landing in a piss-slicked patch of mud. Rhi shrieks with laughter and disgust and they race home to fight for the shower.

Dad never mentions that they went missing for a night; Ianto isn’t sure that he noticed they were gone. He and Rhi never talk about this night again. Sometimes he can see it on the tip of her tongue, she’ll begin a sentence, “Hey, d’you remember that time--” but inevitably finish it with something awful and embarrassing like “--when I dressed you up like a princess and made you go to school that way? I’m sure I’ve got pictures of it somewhere, I should find them and hang them on the fridge or something.” 

The photos used to be in a box in the attic, but he’d already found them and burned them when he was ten. The point is, he’s sure Rhi remembers the woods, but she keeps disappointing him.

Soon after, she starts dating this big rugby-playing bloke named Johnny, and every night for a week Ianto dreams about that forest that appeared to swallow up a playground. It’s not that he doesn’t like Johnny, it’s more that Johnny would never thrive in a perfect world. He’s too solid.

Dad dies two days before Ianto’s eighteenth birthday. The coroner says heart-attack. Ianto suspects he choked on his own vomit. The cousins invade again, and Dad’s mates have a wake that cause the neighbors to ring the police with a noise complaint, and Rhi is crying into Johnny’s shoulder (Aunt Gladys is so glad she’s found a nice boy!), and Ianto is packing his bags.

This isn’t home for him the way it is for Rhi; except for her, there’s nothing keeping him here, and now that she’s got Johnny, he’s expendable. Ianto moves to London less than a week later.

He won’t be sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> Expansion/revision of We Could Be Anything. Thanks to 51stcenturyfox for the betas on both!


End file.
